


Carved Our Love in the Mountainside

by burglebezzlement



Category: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Genre: F/F, Getting Together, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-25 03:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17114054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Bethany and Martha, after Jumanji.





	Carved Our Love in the Mountainside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rachael Sabotini (wickedwords)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedwords/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Title credit to the lyrics of American Money by BØRNS.

Martha asks Bethany to her birthday party.

Old Martha never would have asked. Old Bethany — actually, Martha doesn’t know what she would have done. Her imagination supplies a vision of Bethany’s lip curling, Bethany telling her to go away, but she doesn’t know that. Maybe they could have been friends without Jumanji.

Martha has learned to be brave, sometimes, so she asks Bethany and Spencer and Fridge to join her at the aquarium and then for cake. Martha thinks a celebration of the point in the orbit of the Earth where you happened to be born is kind of silly, but it means her parents will pay for them to all go watch seals swimming, and that’s not something to pass up.

It feels like their friendship has passed some sort of hurdle, seeing Bethany filming herself in front of the penguins. 

She looks away from her phone when she sees Martha coming. “Hey, birthday girl.”

“Shut up.” Martha looks at the penguins, nudges Bethany’s arm with hers. “You want cake?”

“You’re feeding Fridge cake? Do you want to kill him all over again?”

Martha laughs, and drags Bethany down to the aquarium cafe. Spencer starts ducking every time Fridge takes a bite of cake, pretending he expects Fridge to explode, and they all end up laughing so loudly the neighboring tables look over at them. 

It’s like being back in Jumanji. Not the terror, not the confusion — just the good parts, the camaraderie and teamwork. Knowing that she’s got their back and they’ve got hers.

* * *

Sometimes Martha wakes in the middle of the night, flushed, heart pounding, the sound of the drums echoing from her dreams. She lies in her bed, covers thrown off, watching the lights from passing cars cross over her ceiling, and waiting for the dawn.

* * *

Bethany’s changed. She does things now, which is also the name of her Youtube Channel, Bethany Does Things. Martha goes along sometimes when she shoots, mostly to hold Bethany’s GoPro. She gets the wide-angle shots of Bethany talking to her selfie stick as she prepares to hike up a mountain or look for ghosts in a local cemetery or run makeup tests.

Martha still spends most of her time studying, working, trying to get into the best school possible. She’s got a few other interests now, though. Coach Web does a self-defense module in gym, and it’s awesome. Martha’s mostly forgotten the dance-fighting she knew in Jumanji, but she’s got enough left that she’s not starting from the beginning. It feels incredible to kick and punch the punching bag. 

Or maybe the punching was inside her all along. Martha tells Coach Web how awesome it feels, and Coach Web looks surprised before grinning at her. 

Martha talks Bethany into making one of her videos about signing up for karate for the first time. Brantford doesn’t have a dance-fighting dojo, which is probably because dance-fighting isn’t a real thing outside of Jumanji. It doesn’t matter, because karate’s even better. Martha keeps going, even after Bethany’s video is done.

* * *

And then it’s senior year, just like that. 

Martha’s so wrapped up in applications and her last chance at the SATs and all the rest of it that she rarely comes up for air. Bethany and Spencer and Fridge are still there, but Martha feels guilty taking time to see them, taking time for her karate class. 

Bethany’s the one who calls her on it.

She walks up to Martha in the cafeteria one day. It’s lunch, and Martha’s sitting alone, her little corner of the table spread thick with her laptop and her application notes and her flash cards.

Bethany shuts the laptop, and Martha looks up. “What? I was —”

“You’re smart,” Bethany says, sitting down on the other side of the table. “Why don’t you trust yourself?”

Martha lets herself slump. “Smart’s not enough.”

“Bullshit.” Bethany starts stacking the flashcards, the notes. “You’re going to get into a great school, Martha. You’re smart and you’re curious and you’re fun, and you’re also killing yourself with all of this. We’ve barely seen you in two months. We’re your friends, and we miss you.”

She stares at Martha until Martha meets her eyes. 

“…fine,” Martha says. “Fine. Okay.”

“Good.” Bethany doesn’t break eye contact. “Because if you stay this wound up, the janitors are going to be picking little pieces of exploded Martha out of the lights.”

Martha smiles in spite of herself. “It’s not that bad.”

Bethany raises one eyebrow. “You sure?” 

Martha bites her lip and then puts her laptop away. “Okay.” 

She’s missed them, too.

* * *

Martha gets into a great school, just like Bethany said. She gets into most of the great schools she’s applied to. 

Bethany gets into a great film school and decides that she’s not going to go. There’s something about deferred admission. Bethany’s parents don’t approve. Bethany says she’s doing fine with Bethany Does Stuff, and she wants to see where it goes. 

“I can always go back to school,” she tells Martha. They’re hiking in the Presidential Range, and Martha’s holding the GoPro while Bethany models the staying power of some brand of lipgloss Martha’s already forgotten the name of. “This is my chance do something else.”

* * *

Martha heads off to college. Big school, lots of people — there’s an introductory speech, the first day, where Martha finds out that like half of the students are also their high school class valedictorian, just like her. It’s alarming, being in a sea of people so exceptional she doesn’t stand out. 

She finds a dojo. She settles in.

She and Bethany stay in touch. Bethany Snapchats her something every day. Stupid-beautiful views of nature, just like she’s been looking for, and animals she comes across. Sometimes it’s selfies. (Martha secretly likes the selfies the best.) Martha sends back pictures of her dojo or cafeteria food or piles of books. 

She’s studying for a test one evening when Bethany calls, and Martha freezes.

They don’t normally call. They’ve got a primarily text-and-Snapchat-based relationship, plus Martha watching Bethany’s videos, which is inherently one-sided, as relationships go. (Maybe too one-sided. Martha’s roommate calls Bethany “that YouTube star Martha has a crush on,” which always makes Martha blush.)

“You just sent me a picture of books for the fourth day in a row,” Bethany says, when Martha answers.

“What?”

“Go outside,” Bethany says. “Right now. Seriously.”

Martha takes a moment, and then puts her heavy coat on. It’s winter, and the air outside is chilly and cold. It catches in her lungs, makes her head feel light and clear.

“What am I outside for?” she asks Bethany.

“I don’t know,” Bethany says, “I’m not there,” and Martha wishes that she were, wishes that she had walked out to see Bethany there, ready to take them away.

She ends up walking around campus, talking to Bethany about her latest series of videos. She gets to the quad and lies down in the snow, trying to make a snow angel with one hand on the phone, and then just looks up.

The stars are visible, sparkling and clear, a glittering path against the sky. Stupid-beautiful.

“I wish you were here,” she whispers into the phone, and then wishes she could take it back, how vulnerable she sounded.

Bethany’s silent for a moment. “I miss you too,” she says, and Martha lets herself believe that she means it.

* * *

“Do you still think about Jumanji?” Bethany asks, one evening.

They’re on the road trip they’ve been planning. The road trip Bethany’s been planning — Martha’s exams were grueling. She doesn’t remember half the emails she apparently sent to Bethany during the planning stages. 

Today was spent hang-gliding — just shooting Bethany hang-gliding at first, but then they strapped the GoPros to themselves and jumped off the cliff together, and Martha thought her stomach was going to fall out of her and she was going to die, and then the wing caught the air and they were gliding out over the desert. Amazing. 

Bethany’s reviewing footage, taking clips and editing them into a video, while Martha sprawls across the bed. They’re camping out most nights, but Bethany’s built a few hotel room stays into the budget. Because Bethany has budgets now, and calls with advertisers. She has spreadsheets. Somehow, between last year and this year, she’s built the Bethany Does Things brand into an actual business, and Martha’s still in school, and it all feels very weird. 

Martha’s been thinking about what could go wrong if she were to kiss Bethany (her brain’s current answer: everything, up to and possibly including the collapse of the Earth as a viable biosphere; this seems slightly extreme to Martha but she’s working on figuring out why). 

Martha rolls over onto her side. “Think about what?”

“Jumanji.” Bethany doesn’t look up from the laptop, but the way she bites her lip tells Martha the question is a serious one.

“Yeah.” Martha lies back down on her side. “A lot, actually.”

“I think it changed us,” Bethany says, watching the footage of herself hang-gliding. “I wouldn’t have done Bethany Does Stuff without it.”

Martha thinks about it. She wouldn’t be friends with Bethany without Jumanji — she knows that much. She wouldn’t be working on her second black belt at the campus dojo.

But has it changed the course of her life, the way it has for Bethany? For Alex, who became a pilot, who’s raising his family? For Fridge, who decided to take school seriously, instead of forcing Spencer to help him cheat, and ended up leaving the football team to focus on science instead? For Spencer, who learned to stand up for himself?

She looks at Bethany, and knows. _I never would have fallen in love with Bethany._

She’s not sure why, afterwards. Maybe it’s because it’s the first time she’s let herself admit that. But she gets up and goes to Bethany, kneeling down before her, and leans in to kiss her. Her brain’s still screaming _this is a terrible idea_. She kisses her anyway.

It’s a moment before Bethany kisses back, deepening the kiss. Martha tangles her hand into Bethany’s long hair, and Bethany pulls her up from the floor without breaking the kiss.

“What took you so long?” Bethany mumbles, against Martha’s lips, but Martha’s not wasting any more time. She and Bethany tumble back, onto the hotel bed, tangled together.

In the distance, Martha hears the drums.


End file.
